


Impermanence

by Truthwritaslies



Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:44:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6266392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truthwritaslies/pseuds/Truthwritaslies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bob's thoughts as he watches Harry age and die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impermanence

**Author's Note:**

> I own no commercially recognized characters and I make no money off this fic.

Bob has had more owners then Harry has had years on this earth and very few of them have made much of an impression on the spirit. Oh, there have been one or two who had some truly creative ideas that Bob longed to implement just to see the resulting chaos but for the most part they blurred together into a mass of boring human greed and ambition. 

Harry has been different from the first moment he had been introduced to Bob. It may simply have been that Bob had never had a master so young or it could be that Harry actually respected him but Bob suspected that he had developed something of an emotional attachment to the boy simply because the boy was so very different from his previous masters.

Bob watches Harry, now old and sickly, and frets about what he will soon lose. He knows life extending potions, youth returning spells, even how to make charms that grant limited immortality but every time he had tried to bring it up Harry had turned him away with a resolute "No, Bob." 

The last time he had been sent to his skull before the first sentence had fully passed his lips. Bob knew his eye sockets had glowed sullenly for the day but he was in no mood to discuss with Harry why he was so desperate not to lose the one wizard who saw him as something more than a verbal library, who indulged him in literary smut and let him play havoc when he desired to truly "stretch his legs", so to speak. 

Harry had rarely treated him as a servant but always as a friend and it's only as he watches Harry slowly slide into living decay that Bob has come to realize how much that has meant to him. He cannot help his anxious offers, cannot help wanting just a little longer with the infuriatingly decent human named Harry Dresden. 

"When I'm gone, will you still remember me?" Harry had asked him once, when Harry was so very young and Bob had not yet realized how precious Harry is. 

"I never forget anything." Bob had answered, smug and condescending. 

He wants Harry to ask him again. He wants to tell Harry that it was impossible for him to ever forget Harry. 

"Remember me." Harry murmurs in his sleep and Bob knows that this is it. 

He watches Harry's breath slow, then stop altogether. Bob pulls himself from his skull and settles against Harry's chest, the closest a sentient ball of light can come to a hug, and does his own equivalent of crying. 

He's back in his skull by the time the council comes to collect the effects of the Great Wizard. Silently, in the safety of his own mind, Bob swears that no matter who he goes to next he'll never forget his one friend.


End file.
